Coding Like a Girl
medium.com
Coding Like a Girl
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#2Awesome article! I hope my fellow dudes read this and really pay attention!
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#3Guidelines and reactions on how to dress are always eye opening. I remember reading some advice for academic job interviews. For men, it was essentially remember to wear clothing, don't dress like an investment banker, and you'll be fine.
For women, it was paragraphs long. Too feminine and they'll mistake you for a departmental secretary. Too youthful and they'll dismiss you as a student. Too severe and you're "not collegial". Too approachable and you're not serious. The whole thing was just a minefield.
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#4This article makes me wonder if I work in a weird microcosm of the tech world.
Where I work, half the programmers dress in t-shirt,jeans (both men and women 50/50 actually) and then the other half of programmers(again 50/50) dress much more business professional. Even some of the graphic designers dress really formally lately, think pant suit.
From what I talked around about and discovered, a lot of it has to do with some of their career ambitions. Some of the more formally dressed programmers want to be project managers, or they read a book on business etiquette and want job security or something. It's where I first learned of books like Corporate Confidential, and others on business politics.
My personal anecdote: Honestly I've gotten the harshest criticism including gendered criticism from other women in the corp on the way I dress. The harshest criticism included gendered doesn't even come from the tech side, but business or research analysts. I don't know if the my team's tech guys care or not, but they sure haven't made comments one way or the other. Why is so much criticism of women being in tech at the tech guys and not at the other men AND women in other departments enforcing stereotypes in the company ?
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#5I'm a man and the same thing happens to me all the time. People always tell me "What? You're too handsome and muscular, I don't believe you're a programmer, programmer look like geeks and are socially awkward!". It's really tough to fit in at work. Lately I've been growing my beard and drinking beers because of the social pressure, but I feel bad about it. I really wish people would stop putting everyone in a stereotype and just look at our work first, updating their mental stereotypes afterwards if need be.
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#6The problem is that the rules of man-woman interaction are not well defined (especially since the traditional family was destroyed last century). Is there a way to look at girl in a cute pink dress and tell whether she is there to just present a tech topic or she is also open to potential dating? Women are a passive gender, so the way they dress is one of the few ways to send a signal.
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#7The problem is that the rules of man-woman interaction are not well defined (especially since the traditional family was destroyed last century). Is there a way to look at girl in a cute pink dress and tell whether she is there to just present a tech topic or she is also open to potential dating? Women are a passive gender, so the way they dress is one of the few ways to send a signal.
Is there a way to look at girl in a cute pink dress and tell whether she is there to just present a tech topic or she is also open to potential dating?
No.
You're asking too much to be reliable able to look at someone and know if they're open to dating. Given that your target demographic is about 50% of the world's population, the variation is just too large for you to be able to do this. You're going to have to try something else.
Perhaps a polite, friendly conversation and a sustained programme of getting to know them will help you know if they're open to dating.
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#8The problem is that the rules of man-woman interaction are not well defined (especially since the traditional family was destroyed last century). Is there a way to look at girl in a cute pink dress and tell whether she is there to just present a tech topic or she is also open to potential dating? Women are a passive gender, so the way they dress is one of the few ways to send a signal.
It might be easier to get to know women as friends by default and be open to it developing into something more. This seems like the only reasonable way to go about it. I don't see how someone can function if they think of every person they're attracted to in terms of dateability.
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#9The problem is that the rules of man-woman interaction are not well defined (especially since the traditional family was destroyed last century). Is there a way to look at girl in a cute pink dress and tell whether she is there to just present a tech topic or she is also open to potential dating? Women are a passive gender, so the way they dress is one of the few ways to send a signal.
You seem to be falling in the "they dress for men" fallacy that was addressed in the article: maybe they dress in cute pink dresses just to send a big FUCK YOU. Maybe they're not sending any signals and you're using that as an excuse for the different treatment you do.
But the real problem is that the situations you are talking about do not happen when meeting a complete stranger at random in the street; the encounter happens in a tech conference or at work, where you can expect people to be there because of their skills and interests.
Would you ever expect any male to be present in a tech conf not because he's interested in the technology but because he's accompanying someone ? Why is it normal to expect it for females ?
The problem is absolutely not in how women dress/behave/talk/present, it's how the other persons (including other women!) expect something different simply because of their gender.
Re: Coding Like a Girl
#10I'm a man and the same thing happens to me all the time. People always tell me "What? You're too handsome and muscular, I don't believe you're a programmer, programmer look like geeks and are socially awkward!". It's really tough to fit in at work. Lately I've been growing my beard and drinking beers because of the social pressure, but I feel bad about it. I really wish people would stop putting everyone in a stereot…
Same here. I worked at a creative agency some time ago and nearly every employee, men and women, at some point told me, "You know, you don't really look like a coder to me. You're too fashionable and you're not socially awkward."
I just take it in stride. What's the big deal? I just don't make it some huge issue that's related to my gender.